DISPATCHES by Hank Kalet: Our columnist believes clean election laws are the most effective way to end special-interest influence on elected officials.
By: Hank Kalet
Election reform tends to occur in fits and starts.
It took years for Congress to pass the modest McCain-Feignold reforms, which banned the use of soft money essentially, the funneling of unlimited sums of cash through political action and party committees to candidates. This, of course, spawned the growth of so-called 527s, allegedly independent groups that run issue ads that really are nothing more than thinly veiled attacks on particular candidates. The 527s and their impact on the 2004 presidential campaign has led to calls for further reform.
In New Jersey, pay-to-play abuses have been the focus, with the state and many municipalities turning to variations on legislation pushed by the Citizens’ Army, a campaign-finance watchdog group, that are designed to break the link between campaign money and public contracts or development approvals.
While all of these reforms are useful, they only represent the smallest of steps forward. More comprehensive reforms are needed hence, the so-called clean elections movement.
I’ve written about this before. Clean election (or public financing) laws, which have popped up in several states (most notably Arizona and Maine), are the most effective and comprehensive way of ending special-interest influence on elected officials and opening the electoral process to more voices.
New Jersey’s experiment with clean elections was not all that successful it was tried in two legislative districts, the 6th (the Cherry Hill area) and 13th (Monmouth and southeastern Middlesex counties), with just two incumbent candidates qualifying for public funding.
This lack of success, however, did not occur because clean elections can’t work in New Jersey. The problem was the structure of the program.
According to the state Citizens’ Clean Elections Commission, which reviewed the program, the threshold for candidates to qualify was too high. The 2005 program called for candidates to collect 1,000 donations of $5 and another 500 at $30 apiece a daunting task.
The commission, which is recommending an expansion of the program in 2007 to six districts, wants the state Legislature to make some basic changes that it believes will open the process up to more candidates. It suggests:
requiring participating candidates to collect at least 800 contributions of $10 each.
setting a much longer qualifying period, allowing candidates to collect contributions from Jan. 1 to May 10 for the primary and Jan. 1 to Aug. 31 for the general election.
allowing candidates to collect up to $10,000 in private contributions in increments of no more than $100. This would include in-kind contributions such as printing services offered instead of a financial contribution.
streamlining paperwork and reporting requirements.
The program would provide qualifying candidates both major and third-party or independent with $60,000 for a primary campaign and $100,000 for the general election (candidates running unopposed would receive $30,000 for the primary and $50,000 for the general). Additional money could be made available if a clean-elections candidate is running against someone who chooses not to participate or if other "independent expenditures" are made against a clean-elections candidate.
For the most part, these are sensible suggestions and would help achieve a major goal of any electoral reform movement taking big private money out of the mix and ending its influence on the process.
However, I still think the qualifying threshold is too high I’d set it at 500 $5 contributions and could derail the other of goal set by clean-elections advocates: expanding the number of viable candidates both inside and outside the major parties.
I’d also like to see more districts included and a workable plan to include municipal and county races in a clean-elections program down the road but I’m ready to accept the commission’s proposals.
The question is whether the state Legislature is ready.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].

